


Ostinato

by ambiguously



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bodyguard Romance, Dating Your Ex's Kid, F/M, Virgin Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:27:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21621259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: Qi'ra knows who he is the moment he steps through her door looking for a job. That only makes things more exciting.
Relationships: Qi'ra/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 29
Kudos: 29
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs Exchange 2019





	Ostinato

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucymonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/gifts).



He gave his name as Tel when he joined Crimson Dawn. Qi'ra didn't know him at first. She paid people to manage her low-level hired guns, and she paid them well. When Tel demonstrated his Force abilities, Qi'ra's go-between reported the incident to her within an hour. She read Tel's file and called up his records. She hadn't seen his face since he was a child but she knew as soon as she saw the image.

"Send him to me."

He was bright enough to wear a hunter's mask when he came into her presence. Qi'ra ordered him to remove it. The static image hadn't revealed the scar crossing his features, nor the haunted expression in his eyes.

Han was dead. The rumor she'd heard whispered he'd been murdered by his own son.

She stood in front of him. Ostensibly they were alone. She caught the darting glance to where her bodyguards waited. No fear, merely observation. "Tell me your name."

"Arens Tel."

"Tell me your real name."

"It's the name I answer to." He remembered his place, belatedly. "Ma'am."

She had too many questions. Only one mattered. "Have you infiltrated my cartel in order to kill me? Think before you answer. I will know if you lie."

He stared at her with a blank, confused expression. "No. I joined to work."

"You're with the First Order."

He shook his head, and the darkness in his eyes deepened. "No," he whispered. "Never again."

She considered him. This was Ben, the little boy she'd watched Han lift into his arms. Her old love had married some highborn princess and fathered this dark-haired changeling. The Force flowed in him with the same power that had flowed within her last master. Qi'ra had no doubts of who he was, and if the rumor was true, she understood why he'd fled. The past was another planet, and one best left in ashes.

"You have the Force."

He didn't reply.

She turned away from him. "I'm making you one of my bodyguards. The pay is better, and you'll find the job isn't onerous."

"I didn't come here wanting special treatment." Bitterness underlined his words.

Qi'ra turned her head. "I want you by my side because you will be useful. You can call yourself whatever you want. I don't care about your past."

He turned over her offer in his mind. She had no Force abilities, although she'd picked up a few tricks. She couldn't read his thoughts. She knew people, though.

"Thank you, ma'am."

* * *

Crimson Dawn had ridden the waves of change through the height of the Empire and the bloody war that saw its end, emerging as a respectable organization recognized as legitimate by the same new government that had dealt with her under the table during their rebellion. She'd kept her hand in the game, even in the years of calm prosperity. Qi'ra had come too close to starvation in her childhood ever to trust in the promises of those currently in power. Now, with the rise of the First Order and the deterioration of the New Republic, the galaxy was in pieces, and she had all her players ready to swoop in to collect.

Ben accompanied her wherever she traveled, be it to parlay with a First Order representative, or to steal a shipment from a FO convoy, to bring medical supplies to an ailing world cut off from the New Republic's aid, or to extort the governor of another world in exchange for Crimson Dawn's protection from other pillaging players. 'Tel' remained silent under his hunter's mask, reading the emotions of the people who met with Lady Qi'ra (though Lady of what and where, no one ever asked) and advising her in private regarding what the others feared behind their eyes. As if she'd ever needed the Force for that.

He saved her life with his blaster twice, first from a First Order doublecross, then from the fallout of her own doublecross against Kanjiklub.

They fled the second scene together in her third-favorite ship, Ben in the pilot's seat dodging blasts from their pursuers and Qi'ra pulling up nav charts for the jump. He flipped, narrowly avoiding a burning green plasma bolt, only for another to rock their ship under the shields. Ben swore and dove, flinging their ship around in a move she hadn't seen in a long time.

She fell against him, and noted the scorch on his arm. "That will need treatment."

Now lined up behind the nearest ship, Ben fired and flew through the ensuing fireball. "I've had worse."

They were alone. The other two operatives she'd brought with her lay dead behind them, a regrettable loss but as he'd said, she'd had worse. She didn't need to pretend when no one else was around. "Don't you have a lightsaber you could be blocking those blasts with?"

"Don't you have better things to worry about than laser swords?"

Qi'ra handed him the calculation. He punched it in a second before activating the hyperdrive. The other ship fell away behind them. As soon as their course was settled, Ben climbed out of his chair, and without speaking, went to the back. She watched him, thoughtful.

* * *

Professionalism was the key to maintaining her position. Cartel leaders rose and fell around her in petty gang squabbles as another second in command wanted to remove the first word from their title. She'd killed her predecessor, and Dryden had murdered his own. Had Maul not vanished, he would have replaced her eventually, but with his absence, she'd taken her lessons and used them to establish permanent control. Rather than encourage her underlings to fight amongst themselves, she paid them lavishly and rewarded them for cooperation. For her aboveboard dealings with the New Republic, she paid her bills and her taxes, and for her murkier affairs, she clipped loose lends with ruthless efficiency.

Lovers, when she took them, were always from outside her organization. That had not been an issue until now.

It was cliché to say Ben had too much of his father in him, and cruel under the circumstances. Qi'ra had collected information about Han's death, peering over each purchased new detail as though examining jewels for forgeries. She missed Han in the way she missed the childhood she'd never been permitted, one like Ben would have experienced. She thought of Han in the same silvery thread of wandering speculation that she thought of a mother's arms or a father's laugh or Life Day spent surrounded by love and filled with presents. Han had shared the other reality, the cold nights piled five or six to an alcove, the dark days with each competing against the others for another scrap of food, another filched pocket to present to Lady Proxima. Han was absence, and loss, and could have beens. All her empty wishes wrapped inside the enigma of his son.

How she she help but be drawn towards the things she could never have?

Qi'ra knew he watched her, conflicted and angry and needy. He seethed under the hunter's mask when they were out, and stared barefaced while he guarded her alone in her rooms atop her elegant tower, floating through space as Dryden's old yacht had once done.

"Tel, bring me my fire ruby," she ordered him over the comm. He walked in to find her preening nude in front of her own wide mirror. "I want to see how this looks. Place it on me."

She observed his face in the mirror as he stepped behind her. His hands warmed her skin as he wrapped the delicate chain around her neck. His eyes were caught by the bright red gem dipping between her breasts. They were fine breasts, of which she was very aware, never broken in by a baby's suckle, unlike whatever saggy remnants were left on Han's widowed princess.

The pettiness soured in her mouth. "Thank you. You may go."

Without a word, he walked out of her room, retaking his place outside her door.

She dreamed of him that night, his face in shadow as they crashed together on a bed she'd never owned. He kissed her and he was Ben, and she rolled him over to see Han's young, trusting face.

She woke in sweat-soaked sheets, her hand trapped between her thighs and a deadly uncertainty in her heart.

* * *

Tonight was a formal occasion, drenched with the wealth of other criminals who currently playacted as heroes. The collective wealth of the guests at this party could have mortgaged half the Core. The less reputable Core planets, perhaps, she amended in her mind. Because of Ben, because of the reminders of Han, she'd spent more time thinking about the past these days.

As a banker offered her a sparkling gallawine with a wink that hoped for a favorable trade next week, Qi'ra offered up a carefully-honed titter of a laugh implying she was tipsy. She wondered what this man would have made of the scrumrat she used to be. Watching his jowly face over the rim of her glass, she thought he would at best have called her a sewersnipe, and given her a kick. His financier associate beside him, the one who met Qi'ra's laugh with a cultivated and false chuckle of his own, he would have been more trouble. He'd have followed her through the streets, never hurrying his pace behind her, biding his time and enjoying her fear until he grabbed her arm and told her he'd pay ten credits when he was finished. In the years of her youth, she'd stabbed three men just like him and robbed them for good measure.

Ben wanted to kill and bury the past. Qi'ra saw no flaws with that plan.

He stood at the periphery tonight, keeping his quiet guard under his mask. She wondered how many of those here tonight could be slaughtered under his blaster, under his bare hands, or at the end of the lightsaber he kept locked in his own empty room with a code he didn't know she'd cracked. They could kill the past again and again, but neither of them could help but drag the corpses with them.

"Now, about those shipments," said the banker, the red flush over his face speaking to his own intoxication.

Qi'ra said, "I'll have my people see to it," and she set down her gallawine with a practiced smile. She made her way to another conversation, paying more attention to the faces than the words. She glittered tonight, with transparent gems strategically placed in her hair and arrayed along her clinging gown. Those who remembered her at this party would recall the sparkle, and tell one another that Lady Qi'ra still possessed her allure. She needed that coin as much as their credits.

She nodded at them, and thought, "My Jedi could kill you." It was a useless thought. Ben was no Jedi, not now if he'd ever been one, and though he'd killed several times while defending her, she was less sure he'd strike where she pointed.

She casually turned to see him, and noted the eyeline of his mask was affixed on her, as caught in her shimmer as these other fools.

He was hers. She was at least correct in that.

She made her way to the entrance, collecting her wrap from a service droid. Ben fell into step behind her. "Early night," he said, his voice too low to be heard by anyone else.

"I want some fresh air."

Outside, the chill was bracing, though not frosty. She tugged her wrap around herself and stared up at the twin moons overhead, slivered in their late phase. Too many lights cluttered the sky here, hiding the stars from view. The rambling house stretched out behind them. Balconies thrust out from the back, artfully blocked from the ambient glow, and allowed guests the chance to view the stars and overlook the deadly lakes, red and green and yellow in chemical radiance, which lay beyond the fine pillars of the mansion. Rumor said the house's owner dissolved his enemies in those deceptive pools, and certainly some guests arrived to these gatherings and did not leave. But what was a party without a bit of danger?

She meant to leave. Instead her feet found the stones of the garden path, leading away from the house and the lakes, deep into the hanging branches of a tall garden rich with foliage she'd never seen on any other world. Her bodyguard followed her, his own thoughts shadowed.

When they were alone, she asked, "Have you ever visited this world before?"

"No."

Not entirely a surprise. The home of a known gangster was not the kind of place a fine princess would visit in her senatorial duties, although it was exactly the kind of place she'd expect a no-account smuggler to case before robbing the owner.

"He'd have you killed if he found out who you were. Fenric has no use for the First Order. Small-minded, really."

"I'm not with the First Order."

"He wouldn't care." She kept walking, deep into the darkened garden, the slippers on her feet growing colder. Here the trees were tall enough to block the lights. When Qi'ra stared upwards, she could make out the dim shapes of the stars. They had no other observers.

"Tell me what you see when you look at me."

He didn't answer, and his hunter's mask gave away no clues.

"I gave you an order."

"I don't know how to answer. You look like you."

"Take that mask off." Obediently, he removed it, and he was just Ben, just a strange young man she'd met as a child and who wore Han's features uncomfortably. "Has anyone ever told you that you're handsome in the right light?"

He turned his face away, and she saw his embarrassment flush through him. She wondered. Qi'ra stepped closer to him.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're handsome?"

His eyes flashed back to her, expecting to find teasing. Qi'ra was too old to tease, and too tired. "It hasn't come up," he said finally.

A soft, almost painful twinge hit her heart. He'd never had a lover. She was positive, suddenly and surely. Not like his eager father. She reached out, taking his arm. "Tell me what you see when you look at me."

"My employer."

"And?"

"And what? Are you looking for flattery? Hire a poet."

"What would I need a poet for?"

He shook his head impatiently. "To tell you that you're beautiful. To compare your skin to moonglow and silk. I'm sure they could come up with something."

She shifted her wrap, baring her shoulders, and brought his hand to the skin there. He shivered, staring at her. "I wouldn't say silk," Qi'ra said, moving under his palm. "Poets always get it wrong."

"You used to be with him," Ben said, his words leaden in the cool night air. He hadn't mentioned his father once since he'd joined her employ. He didn't take his hand away.

"We were lovers." She waited for the hitch in his breath, and she pushed. "I could have been your mother."

The hand gripped down, holding her as Qi'ra kept her eyes locked on Ben's. She raised her other hand to his face, stroking his cheek and chin. "Such a good boy," she said, and she let him tug her to him and kiss her savagely until her head spun.

The garden was a private place, and Qi'ra had been to many parties here. She knew they weren't the first couple to fall upon a Tellusian marble bench, mouths locked together. They weren't the first pair to drop garments to the ground: her wrap, her panties, his jacket. She wasn't nearly the first person to ruck up an expensive dress and mutter in an ear, "Here. Now."

But she was the first ever to unwrap Ben's fly this way, and the first to hold him in her hand as she guided him between her legs.

As they moved together, Qi'ra in a well-known rhythm and Ben in utter abandon, she pulled the straps of her dress down her shoulders, freeing her breasts. Ben had yet to learn the easy movements of a decent lover, and paused to reach for them, groaning as Qi'ra took his head and bent his mouth against one aching nipple.

The treacherous thought slid into her mind that Han had been this clumsy his first time, too.

Need overtook him. He pushed against her, bending her against the bench as his hips drove into her. The angle was uncomfortable for her neck and wonderful for her vulva. She needed more, and couldn't reach herself.

"Touch me," she ordered, and either he knew or he guessed well what she meant. One hand dropped between them, snaking against her clit and rubbing hard. "Better," she said with a gasp. "Good boy."

He groaned loudly and jerked into her, the too-quick finish of a man who'd never done this before. Qi'ra wouldn't let herself be disappointed. She had time to teach him. Ben pulled out of her, and lowered her legs, spreading them to either side of the bench with his big hands. His face bent to her then, and to her shock, he nosed at her clit, then licked with an unsure but eager tongue as she grasped his hair. Her body coiled in pleasure and let go as she gave a quick, good cry. His mouth bent lower, suckling at her wetness, lapping up his own come that spilled out.

Still trembling, Qi'ra considered the words that had triggered this. "Just think," she said, tugging at his hair. "In another life, you could have slid into the world through my cunt."

The moan Ben let out vibrated through her, and his mouth attacked her again, furious now, wrenching another orgasm from her within a minute.

Qi'ra lay there on the bench, head swimming in the best way. She'd have to dig through her memories and recall all the things she and Han had got up to in the old days. There'd been very little to do for entertainment in Lady Proxima's service, and as soon as they'd figured out sex for themselves, they'd tried it a lot, as she recalled.

She couldn't wait to see how Ben would react when she told him every last detail.


End file.
